Fresh meat from the garden?

This pool on the Isinglass River is a great, easy access place to fish for brook trout.

As you know if you're a regular reader of this blog, I am competing with a garden in Georgia in the 1000 Pound Challenge with a goal of putting 1000 pounds of food on the table from a garden of 500 square feet or less in one calendar year. Although the challenge covers only produce grown within the garden plot, there are other ways to put food on the table with the garden.

For example, as a part of my annual spring garden preparation, I turn over the soil in my raised bed gardens to loosen it up and to dislodge and pull out weeds that have infiltrated the garden. Today, I decided that as I turned over a few pitchforks full of dirt, I might as well collect the earthworms that were uncovered (about 4-5 in each turn) and put them to good use. Of course, leaving them in the garden to enrich the soil with worm casings is also good use, but I had another purpose in mind.

I have also written in this blog that fishing is foraging, too, and a great way to put food on the homestead table. While we don't often think of the garden plot as putting meat on the table, it is very effective at propagating earthworms because of all the organic matter worked into the soil to make it fertile for the plants. While earthworms are edible, they're very small and don't particularly appeal to my predilection for haute cuisine...

Earthworms do, however, top the preferred menu for brook trout and brook trout is certainly on my menu. So this morning I threw a handful of earthworms in a biodegradable paper cup with a bit of dirt and headed for the nearby Isinglass River with my father-in-law to do a little fishing. Within our first ten minutes there I caught my first fish of the year, a ten inch brook trout.

The fish I caught was most likely stocked as part of the NH Fish and Game trout stocking program. Game fish populations are closely monitored and catches are limited by the NH F&G so as to maintain sufficient numbers in New Hampshire waters. Plentiful game fish allows New Hampshire to profit from licensing fees and tourism generated by fishing. The benefit for the environment is that the state has a powerful economic incentive to keep its streams and rivers protected from pollution and the encroachment of suburban sprawl. More wild areas mean more wildlife and a healthier environment for all.

Despite the early success, we did not land another fish over the next few hours and we left for home. Within minutes of arriving home, of course, it started to hail even though we had beautiful partly cloudy, warm weather for our mid-day fishing. It is New England, after all.

To make a long story short, The fish I caught with the earthworms grown in my garden weighed in at .266 pounds after being cleaned and dressed (bones in). That's an entree for one person. Unofficially, then you could say that my garden produced this bounty as well, although it doesn't count for the 1000 Pound Challenge. Living with the land, however, means that we take advantage of available food sources that put minimal strain on the environment. Fishing not only meets that goal, but provides some good relaxation therapy and a chance to build memories and strengthen bonds with friends and family.
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Fishing is Foraging, Too

I often talk about wild edibles, plants that grow wild in field and forest that can be eaten. Foraging need not, however, be limited to vegetarian fare. Even for those who don't hunt, fishing can be a plentiful source of nutritious food.

I prefer to fish the clear, contaminant-free brooks and streams that run down from the mountains here in New England. Their sources are high above any old mills, factories or storm drainage systems so the water is clean and pure as it self-aerates by splashing down over little waterfalls and endless rocky cascades.

These streams ore often home to brook trout, a small but tasty fish that is easy to clean and easy to cook. Brook trout fishing is a more active sport than some other types of fishing because you have to move along the stream searching for the small pools where the fish tend to hide. Although I enjoy all types of fishing, brook trout fishing is one of my favorites.

I was just given a regular fishing column for Yahoo! Sports where my first fishing article, about Brook Trout Fishing, was published yesterday. You can read it at here. I'm mentioning it here, because I think fishing is an often overlooked part of the self-sufficiency equation. For the low cost of an annual state fishing license, you can easily catch enough fish to supply your family for a year.

Keeping seed stock for self-sufficient spring planting

One of the ways in we try to become more self-sufficient as gardeners is to keep our own seed stock at the end of the year so that we can grow or own crops year after year without buying seeds. This doesn’t work well for everything we grow. For some things we’re still better off buying commercially available seeds, but  garlic works quite well in the New England climate and is also one of the easiest to propagate.

Read more with complete step by step instructions and photos on how to propagate and plant garlic...

Photo by Brad Sylvester, all rights reserved